Louisa Turns Three

Louisa's birthday party went off without a hitch! We took a risk and invited 13 sweet children to our house for games, lunch and dessert. Only 9 could make it. The risky part was encouraging their parents to leave. We love family parties too, but I wasn't quite up for the "event" it would have been with so many guests. Plus, we hoped our friends would welcome a little adult time.

The bug theme came together nicely 3 days prior to the party when I went on Amazon to buy ones of those big parachutes with handles. The bugs, lizards and snakes by Melissa & Doug were too cute, so I rounded out the party bags and activities with bug nets ($1 bin at Target!), insect tattoos and little bags of gummy worms. If I would've allowed Louisa to pick the theme, I'm sure it would have been a princess party, or more specifically, Frozen or Beauty and the Beast, so I left her out of that part of the planning process. Not that I have anything against princesses (well, actually, I might) but they should at least be DreamWorks princesses, right?

The photos of my peanut butter pie didn't turn out; bad lighting...poor focusing, but it tasted pretty good. My only critique was that it was too cheesecake-y. Louisa acted thankful, but I knew how she really felt when she caught me eating a piece for a snack the next day. She walked out, blurry-eyed from her nap, and said, Mom, why are you eating some pie? I told her it was my snack and asked her if she wanted a piece. No, she said, maybe tomorrow.  That was the first time I've seen this girl say no to a sweet! Nate thinks it was the peanuts on top. Nuts and cantaloupe: these are the only two foods that Louisa is very certain she doesn't like.

**Update: I just found a priceless photo that includes the peanut butter pie. And it goes to show: you can still celebrate your birthday with grandparents across the country. We re-lit the candles after this and called my parents, too!

Here are a few images from Louisa's friend party. As you can see, we tried to do a mock-Lunchable lunch for the kids. I think it went over well. We certainly didn't end up throwing away as much food as you see on their plates in this first picture.

It was very fun! And I can confidently say that three years old is not too young to have a kids-only birthday party. We are thankful that our friend Jacob stayed though. An extra set of adult hands did come in handy more than once.

Whew! We survived the girls' birthdays. Now to come up with a fun theme for Nate's big 34th...